Star Control 3
| Star Control 3 | |
|---|---|
 Cover art of the DOS version | |
| Developer(s) | Legend Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Accolade |
| Distributor(s) | Stardock |
| Designer(s) | George MacDonald, Michael Lindner |
| Series | Star Control series |
| Platform(s) | DOS, Mac OS |
| Release date(s) | 1996 |
| Genre(s) | Sci-fi real-time strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Distribution | CD-ROM, download |
Star Control 3 is a video game developed by Legend Entertainment. They were hired by Accolade to create a sequel of Star Control II when the original creators Toys For Bob expressed no interest in creating the sequel with the same budget as Star Control II (which left them working without pay for several months). It was released for DOS and the Macintosh in 1996.
Gameplay
The game used a 2.5D form of melee combat, but 2D combat was still available. However, unlike SC2, all ship designs absent from the story mode were omitted (with the exception of the Arilou). The module tunes of the second game were replaced with MIDI music, and pixel animations for communication with aliens were replaced with rendered and digitized 2D graphics of live puppets.
The gameplay was a mix of borrowing the melee combat and alien encounter dialogue trees from SC2, with new colony management elements which could be compared to Master of Orion. SC2's resource gathering, and hyperspace travel gameplay elements were omitted.
Plot
SC3's story expanded on the mystery of the Precursors' disappearance, and introduced new enemies in the form of the Hegemonic Crux.
Shortly after the end of Star Control 2, hyperspace mysteriously collapses throughout the galaxy, stranding most space faring races. The Captain, living on Unzervalt, finds another precursor ship, with an experimental "warp bubble" drive that allows it to travel between star systems without using hyperspace. The Captain contacts the other races and they discover that the hyperspace collapse is somehow connected with the Rainbow Worlds, and that it originates near the galactic core in the Kessari quadrant. The Captain is sent to the Kessari quadrant with colony ships from several races to investigate and solve the problems with hyperspace.
The Captain explores the Kessari quadrant, clashing with the local power bloc, the Hegemonic Crux, led by the robotic Daktaklakpak. During his investigation of the hyperspace collapse, a new threat becomes apparent - an ancient race called the Eternal Ones that inefficiently consume the energy of all sentient beings once an eon are near to returning.
It is revealed that to protect themselves from the Eternal Ones the Precursors genetically modified themselves to regress to the intelligence of a cow. They created mindless robots (the Daktaklakpak) to reverse the process after the Eternal Ones left. During the last feeding, the Daktaklakpak malfunctioned and forgot their purpose, leaving them stranded at that intelligence level. The Captain temporarily reverses the process on a single Precursor, that instructs him before its death in how to make the Eternal Ones feeding more efficient, so that only a little sentience is required rather than the destruction of all sentient life in the galaxy.
The Captain then solves various Kessari quadrant problems, including persuading the Owa race to stop dumping their antimatter waste on Rainbow Worlds, which was the cause of the hyperspace collapse, and breaking the power of the Hegemonic Crux, culminating in the defeat of a Crux precursor battleship. The Captain then gathers sentience from many Kessari quadrant races and uses it to sate the Eternal Ones.
Races
Hegemonic Crux
- Clairconctlar
- Daktaklakpak
- Doog
- Harika & Yorn
- K'tang
- Ploxis
League
- Chmmr
- Earthling
- Mycon
- Orz
- Pkunk
- Spathi
- Syreen
- Ur-Quan Kzer-Za
- Utwig
- VUX
Unaligned
- Arilou
- Exquivan
- Herald
- Lk
- Owa
- Precursors
- Vyro-Ingo
- Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah
- Xchagger
References
External links
- Star Control 3 at GOG.com
- Star Control 3, The Pages of Now & Forever.
- Star Control 3 at MobyGames